Department Of The Interior, Environment, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - September 24, 2009)

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, let me thank my distinguished Environment and Public Works Committee chairman, Senator Boxer, for her passionate defense of this statute, which has improved the quality of life and the quality of our air for a generation now of Americans against this assault. I appreciate that she has given me a few moments to discuss the amendment the Senator from Alaska wanted to offer. I know it was not offered, but, nevertheless, I feel we need to respond, given the message that amendment sends to this body, to the Nation, and to the world regarding America's position on the need to curb global warming and our move toward a clean energy economy.

This amendment would have tied the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency at the very time we need its help to protect the American public from the dangers of climate change--dangers to America's public health, to our national security, and to our economy.

A little history is in order here.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overrode the Bush administration and ruled, in a case called Massachusetts v. EPA, that the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants, if the Agency determined that greenhouse gases posed a danger to public health, and the Court further obliged the EPA to go ahead and make that determination, yes or no.

The Bush administration, of course, did everything in its power to avoid the duty ordered by the Supreme Court, and it was only this April that the EPA, under Administrator Jackson, finally issued its proposed endangerment finding. The finding, unsurprisingly, acknowledged what every reasonable scientist--in fact, every reasonable person--has known for years: That carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gas emissions cause our planet's atmosphere to warm and pose a threat to the public health.

The conclusion that these gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act logically and inevitably followed, as required by law, from the determination that these pollutants threaten public health. Thankfully, this administration has already begun this important work. Senator Murkowski's amendment would have required EPA to take what is called a timeout while Congress crafted a legislative solution to global warming. Unfortunately, time is not on our side as we race to protect our planet from the effects of carbon pollution.

Just yesterday, our President spoke before the United Nations about the challenges to all nations from unchecked global climate change and the opportunities we have to revive the world economy through the advancement of clean energy and clean energy jobs. The world community needs the United States to be a leader in this effort, and the world is watching our actions closely.

President Obama pledged that our steps so far--investments in alternative energy, efficiency measures, tougher fuel standards--and our steps to come ``represent an historic recognition on behalf of the American people and their government.'' He said:

We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations.

Forcing the EPA to take a timeout now would have sent exactly the opposite message; would tell the world we do not truly care about climate change; that we are not ready to step up, let alone lead; would say we would prefer to leave a polluted world to our children and grandchildren, a world far worse off than the world our parents and grandparents left to us. Any timeout now would have damaged our international progress and our leadership.

Moreover, a timeout of the sort proposed in the Murkowski amendment would have hurt our legislative efforts. Supporters of the timeout idea profess to want a legislative solution to address climate change. Well, maybe. But doing so would have set back that very goal.

To the extent some of the big polluters are working with us in this legislative process, it is because they feel the hot breath of the future on their necks, and they know they had better participate or be left to their fate. Give them an artificial reprieve from those consequences--real consequences of science, of fact, of law, and of nature--and their motivations would change. Delay would become their friend, indeed their purpose, because of the artificial, false status quo that a timeout would create for them.

Let me tell you how these polluters affect Rhode Island, my home.

Let's start back in 1972, when EPA authorized the use of tall smokestacks instead of emissions limits. By the mid-1970s, four different circuit courts of appeal had ruled that the Clean Air Act required real emissions controls and not just increased stack heights. A tall smokestack only curbs local emissions, but it spreads the poisons widely.

In 1977, Congress enacted section 123 of the Clean Air Act, which barred the construction of smokestacks taller than called for by good engineering practice. Notwithstanding, Midwestern powerplants continued to increase the height of their stacks. The average smokestack height increased from 200 feet tall in 1956 to over 500 feet tall in 1978. In 1970, there were two smokestacks in the United States taller than 500 feet. By 1985, 180 smokestacks stood taller than 500 feet. Twenty-three of these were over 1,000 feet. Once you get over 1,000 feet tall, you actually have to put that smokestack on the aviation safety maps because it becomes a hazard to aviation. Local interests, of course, were happy because less of the smokestack-emitted poisons fell locally and more were spread abroad.

What did this mean for downwind States, such as my State of Rhode Island? Well, all other things being equal, the taller the stack, the farther the poisons travel. According to a 2001 report by the Clean Air Act Task Force entitled ``Power to Kill: Death and Disease from Power Plants Charged with Violating the Clean Air Act,'' pollution spewed from just 51 plants has shortened the lives of as many as 9,000 people nationwide annually, including about 1,500 to 2,100 people in our downwind States such as Rhode Island.

These plants have also caused tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year and hundreds just in Rhode Island. This is just from 51 plants. Physicians for Social Responsibility has estimated that all coal plants in the United States together cause about 23,600 premature deaths and 554,000 asthma attacks each year.

The Centers for Disease Control tells us that between 1980 and 1995 the incidence of childhood asthma increased over 100 percent--the increase of childhood asthma more than doubled--from 3.6 percent to 7.5 percent of all children.

By 2005, nearly 9 percent of all children were reported to have asthma. In African-American children, the rate soared to 19.2 percent--nearly one in five African-American children.

Massachusetts, Maryland, and my State of Rhode Island--all downwind States--were among the five States with the highest incidence of asthma.

The Rhode Island Lung Association estimates that 15,000 children--15,000 children in my State of less than 1 million population--have asthma. Nationally, every year more than 40 kids 4 years old and under will die from asthma. Another 115 kids 5 to 15 years old will die, and nearly 400 more age 15 to 34 will die every year. This is what upwind polluters have helped cause.

When I was attorney general for the State of Rhode Island, I joined EPA's lawsuit against American Electric Power for its illegal modification of 16 plants. In 2008, the utility company settled the lawsuit by installing billions of dollars of pollution-control equipment which slashed NOX and SO2 emissions by 813,000 tons each year--813,000 tons of pollution each year. American Electric Power also paid a $15 million penalty, nearly five times what ExxonMobil has paid so far for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1990, and it invested another $60 million in environmental mitigation projects. So don't tell me things can't be done.

But in Rhode Island, the danger continues, and still every summer in Rhode Island the morning radio announces several days that are unsafe air days, when infants and seniors and people with breathing difficulties are told they should stay home, that they should stay indoors because the summer air in Rhode Island is not safe, and one of the prime reasons it isn't safe is because we are downwind. So don't expect a lot of sympathy from me for these polluters, with their belching smokestacks, that want a free pass to endanger the public, timeout or not.

Here is a little description of how tall some of these stacks go. The tallest building is Willis Tower in Chicago. A lot of its radio towers are on the top, but it is still a heck of a big building. The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet. The Washington Monument is 555 feet. The Statue of Liberty is 305 feet. In Marshall, WV, there is a smokestack 1,204 feet tall. In Rockport, IN, there is a smokestack 1,038 feet tall. In Jefferson, OH, there is a smokestack exactly 1,000 feet tall. I don't know whether that has to go on the aviation safety maps. That is just at the boundary. What these things do is they solve the local problem of pollution by pushing the poisons so far up into the atmosphere that they don't fall in West Virginia, in Indiana, and in Ohio, but they move elsewhere and they land often in Rhode Island, and we face the health consequences every day. So if anybody is looking for a sympathetic ear for these powerplants, they have come to the wrong place if they have come to Rhode Island.

Today, we are facing perhaps the greatest environmental threat of our time: Global climate change triggered by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. We have supersaturated the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, and it is having an effect. Coal-fired powerplants share much of the blame. Forty percent of all carbon dioxide emissions come from coal powerplants. And the polluters will fight--they are fighting--any effort to control their carbon dioxide emissions. The polluter opponents of climate change who are resisting our change to a clean energy economy are strong and wealthy, and they will stop at nothing. We have even recently seen forged letters to Congress opposing climate change legislation in the names of groups that never authorized the letters.

Just like the polluters fought the Clean Air Act in the past, just like the polluters built taller stacks rather than making what comes out of the stacks cleaner, just like the polluters manipulated their flunkies in the Bush administration, today the polluters wanted a timeout. They may say they support a legislative solution to climate change, but if they could fool us so that we defunded and stopped and weakened all of the other available tools for pollution control, that would not help in passing a climate bill. That would give those polluters every incentive in the world to defect, to delay, and ultimately to defeat our efforts to move this country toward a clean energy economy, to stop subsidizing their pollution of our air, and our efforts to start solving this great problem of our day. To protect ourselves, we have to keep all of our tools available, all options for curbing greenhouse gas emissions working to protect us.

I thank the chairman very much for yielding me this time, and I look forward to working with her as we continue to find ways to support this legislation.

I yield the floor.

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